The Black Letter
by plastik cuffs
Summary: Ciel escaped a deal with a devil 120 years ago by becoming a devil himself, leaving his demonic servant aching for another taste of Phantomhive soul. Coiled into the roots of the family tree, the demon offers his services to the last leaf. SebasxOC
1. his arrival

**disclaimer:** I do not own Kuroshitsuji, Yana Toboso does.

* * *

><p><strong>San Francisco, California, United States of America<strong>

**October 20, 2011**

**9:45 p.m.**

A letter arrived this morning to the Orianthe apartment complex, unit 429. Enveloped in thick paper shaded the deepest of blacks, its red wax seal had been broken in awful curiosity. Though it had been addressed to the proper apartment and proper tenant, this fashionable velvety envelope was out of place amongst the stained gray carpet that rolled down the apartment hallway like a dried cow tongue, and bare flickering bulbs which lit the way to apartment 429 for whoever neglected a community mail box to lay this letter on the tenant's doorstep. With its seal broken, a sweet yet spicy aroma seemed to slither out of its paper lips to tickle the openers' nose. It read in wispy black handwriting:

_Dear Miss Wells,_

_I regret to inform you that your great aunt Madame Gwendolyn passed away October 15th at 10:00 p.m. London time. Though you may have not spoken, let alone known of her existence, you are her only remaining relative._

_To keep this letter short as I'm sure you're pressed for time, living in the bustling city of San Francisco, I must inform you that she has left her entire estate, money, and contracts to you. The funds will be transferred to your account on the 21st of this month. As for the rest of the inheritance mentioned in this letter, I will personally discuss them with you soon._

_Sincerely,_

_The Butler_

What a well written letter, at least that's what she thought when she read it over the first time and then decided it was not just any old sham, but a really ridiculous one. People were getting lazy, now she understood how extreme junk mail could be. However the letter had not been thrown into the trash or even burned out of spite considering her poor financial situation. Really the contents within that letter seemed to mock the fact she had outdated milk in the fridge and a cat who only ate Meow Mix that went for twelve dollars a bag at most.

For some reason she kept the letter and now as she sat on the thin windowsill, chipping away at the white lead paint with her flaking red fingernails, her tired gaze fell down upon the city streets and sidewalks drowned in autumn rain. Who on earth would bother to write such a ridiculous letter? Surely they weren't expecting to convince anyone of such a fantastical story? The only odd thing about it beyond the fact it was a black enveloped letter addressed to her from the U.K., was some old bat left her fortune to her and didn't ask for a bank account or social security number. If you were going to sham someone, weren't those two things necessary?

Suddenly her phone rang, vibrating its heavy body and twisting dial nearly right off its stand. With no money for a cell phone and barely any for a landline, the phone was a fossil along with her moth eaten furniture that stank of cat urine. Apparently Goodwill had no taste, nor did she. The phone rang about several times before it's boxy answering machine picked up to record the seventh message for today from her deadbeat ex-boyfriend. Even through telephone wires she could hear the slur of adderall and cheap forty ounces. Apparently the few months he put into their relationship were worth nights of fun she refused, so he persisted in means to collect.

"Stop calling," she groaned, leaning her cheek against the window's cold glass.

As the warmth from her cheek crept a fog across the pane, there came a sudden crisp knock at her apartment's heavily locked and chained door. Usually visitors rang first to be let up, but it didn't strike as odd since it wouldn't be the first time the buzzer broke. Her nosey, rat-like landlord had a system for that just in case. Every fifteen minutes she'd have her balding thirty-year-old son glance out their window down to the dirty stoop to see if anyone was jamming their thumb on the numbers.

Cold even in her droopy gray university sweater and unkempt jeans, she slid from the windowsill to lazily walk over to the door and peek out the peephole. There in the bald bulb's flickering yellow glow, stood a tall man dusting off a black rain coat. Unable to make out his face since he had turned to see if he missed any stray rain drops on his shoulders, she cracked the door open and its chain strung it from being budged any further.

"Can I help you?" asked the tenant.

One round, cloudy blue eye peering cautiously out from behind a thick lense, she watched the tall man pull his broad shoulders back and turn to grace her with a charming subtle smile, just a mere leaf of the elegant dignity he powerfully exuded.

"What a question, I don't think I've ever been asked what someone else could do for me, rather it's always been I asking what I may do for them," he replied so precisely.

The sound of his voice rang as clear, deep, and elegant as an old English ceramic bell. From the trilby hat atop his head, down the buttoned coat that hugged his straight stature, to the gleaming shoes on his feet, he was all in black, contrasting greatly the ivory of his skin and white of his gloves. It wasn't every day you saw a man dressed this richly, in fact it was almost otherworldly even in such a rich city as this.

"Um," her brow furrowed in clear confusion before beginning to nudge the front door closed. "You must be in the wrong place. The Fairmont is on the other side of the city, dude."

"Fairmont? Dude?" he repeated in dry amusement. "No, I'm quite certain I'm in the proper place, no matter how hysterically atrocious it is."

This city came with a warning pamphlet that was distributed through word of mouth, it read to close the door on any weirdo you didn't know, especially on those sharply dressed. "Listen I'm sorry you got lost and ended up in this hysterically atrocious place. So why don't you go down to city hall and ask for directions. It's a lot closer than the Fairmont. Now I got a Music theory paper to finish. Sorry. Bye."

Swiftly shutting the door, before leaving it she made sure to lock all the locks and double check the chain. Everything held sturdy despite rust and wear. As the tenant of room 429 made to walk herself into her bedroom to continue a music theory paper she left blipping on her laptop hours before, there came another knock on the door.

"Unfortunately Miss Patrice, I am unable to go elsewhere just yet," his voice eerily transcended the apartment walls.

Upon hearing the stranger address by her proper name, chills raced up both Patrice's arms and legs. They had not exchanged more than a few words, let alone names.

"Then I'm calling the police," Patrice declared boldly, though the prospect of legit trouble had her heart pounding against the inside of her ribs. "They'll definitely help you go somewhere!"

Over at the phone straight out of the eighties, she ignored the red light of her answering machine and picked up the receiver. Before Patrice could even strum the first one of nine-one-one, the stranger's voice paralyzed her with its eerie eloquence yet again.

"Miss, I'd rather not cause a scene on my first day in America the beautiful. Please, if you merely read the letter I sent you, it should clear up this predicament."

Staring wide-eyed over her shoulder, there sat the mysterious black letter on her makeshift coffee table. "Letter?" she softly stuttered.

"Why yes," he cooed, happy to hear she indeed received the post. "I believe in my letter addressed to you, Miss Patrice Wells, I thoroughly explained the circumstance of my arrival here today on the twenty-first of October."

"It's the twentieth," she whispered.

"Oh! Is it?" an airy chuckle followed. "Well, please excuse my intrusion upon your privacy then. I believe the time shift and jet lag is to blame, but I shall not make excuses."

Carefully setting the phone back on its receiver, Patrice picked up the black envelope. This sham of a letter, was it legit? There was no other way to explain the man at her door who knew her name though they had not met a single time before.

"I," she clenched the envelope. "I don't believe you. This is a sham! Go find some unsuspecting old person, because I'm a student barely making it in this damn city! Go away, creeper!"

Having heard her cry of refusal and claiming him a creeper, it was annoyingly obvious that he would not be entering this apartment in time to explain everything before midnight. "Huh," sighed the man, tipping his hat back in thought. "Miss, if you believe the letter and I to be a sham, by all means make a call to your bank, all funds promised in my letter were wired from Switzerland to your account this morning. Go on. I'll be patient."

That was right, the letter read of some old bat she was related to, kicking the bucket and leaving behind some fortune among other things not explained. "I-" she started, but was interjected by the man's calm reassurance.

"I'm unable to get into your apartment if you do not permit me, or rather if you do not unlock the door. Just pick up your phone and make the call. What could I possibly do out here to you in the mean time?"

Good point. Patrice should have just called the police to get this crazy creeper off her doorstep, out of the apartment complex entirely, and thrown behind bars, but she opted for the latter. Besides what could she possibly lose, it was just one measly phone call?

She strummed the phone dial ten times till the bank's recorded messenger picked up and she strummed the dial yet again. Every number drew a little closer to the balance until finally it was mechanically whispered into Patrice's ear. Her hands began to shake as a number she had only ever seen totaled in Math classes, registered to her mind as an actual total in USD. The phone slipped from her quivering hand to clatter down onto its receiver.

From behind the apartment door, the man's handsome mouth curled into an even handsomer grin. "That's not even a quarter of the fortune left in your name. The rest waits in London, though I doubt even a girl as young as you could possibly spend all of it in several lifetimes."

From his side of the door, he heard the knob jiggle after a long symphony of unlatched locks. Very slowly did the door once again crack open and rather than a single eye peering out of the dark up at him, two did from behind her glasses; they were as wide with shock as they were round like crackers.

"Wh-who are you exactly?" Patrice asked in a quiver, unable to even feel the words coming from her mouth.

"Excuse me for my rudeness, for I forgot to introduce myself before you slammed that hideous door on my face," he stepped back and with a dignity not of this time, let alone this world, took his hat into a long sinuous hand and placed it atop his heart "I am Sebastian Michaelis, humble butler to the Phantomhive family, and I am here to offer my services to the last remaining member of the illustrious bloodline."

She blinked, feeling the color drain from her face, "you gotta be kidding me."

Before Sebastian could question if the joke was truly on him, he heard a loud thump and regained his posture only to gaze down despairingly to Patrice Well's body, literally unconscious with disbelief. Wondering only briefly if that tumble had been severe enough to cause any damage, he sighed grabbing a leather bound suitcase and with it in hand stepped over her. Once setting the briefcase neatly in a shabby closet adjacent to the even shabbier door, he shut it and looked back to the young woman still sprawled out like an ugly, mismatched starling who smacked its little head into a glass window.

"My, what a shameful mess," echoed his voice in the barely furnished unit, unsure if he meant the situation, apartment, or the poor excuse of Phantomhive descendent on the floor. "Might as well tidy this up before any of the neighbors become suspicious, after all…rats and cockroaches are such curious creatures."

Effortlessly did the butler who called himself Sebastian, a name not truly his along with this physical appearance, but unwilling to part with either, lifted the young woman up meaning to place her atop her sofa. However he discovered coming around the back of it, that the sofa was hideously stained and the source of the ammonic odor stinging his eyes. With an even heavier sigh, Patrice thrown over a single shoulder, he searched every closet and cabinet until finding where she kept her sheets. Thankfully her sheets were clean and smelled of quality soap. Perhaps it was a sign that this filth was not a habit, but something she was subjected to.

Dull floral printed sheet laid across the sofa by one arm, another set her down as gently as possible. With Patrice out of his hands, he placed them on his hips and slowly turned his tall, lean body to properly survey his work. "I…I don't even know where to start," he grumbled, putting his face to his palm. "Squatters live more lavishly than this child."

From out of his raincoat's breast pocket he removed a glimmering silver timepiece. Popping it open, he was grateful for whatever American had the idea to open 24-hour supermarkets. Too late to make anything beyond tea and with no way to access the newly transferred fortune from Miss Well's account as long as she was unconscious, he would have to shop with his own money. "My first day in America and I'm going to spend it in a 24-hour supermarket. How fitting," he said, taking Patrice's keys from the coffee table and walking straight back out the front door and locking it behind him.

* * *

><p><strong>October 21, 2011<strong>

**7:03 a.m.**

The light of morning had not woken Patrice, nor had the blare of her alarm that should have been set for her earliest of classes but was not. Nothing or no one had woken her except for the throbbing soreness of her neck and back, having fallen asleep on the sofa? Mid-stretch she groaned and shifted slowly as if afraid she might break something from how stiff her bones felt. After rubbing sleep from her eyes, she blindly reached over to the coffee table and found her glasses. She gave them a brief cleaning with her sweater's sleeve, but only managed to smudge them more.

"I really need to get that cleaning solution spray," grumbled Patrice, pushing the glasses up her nose. "Probably might be a coupon for it in the Sunday paper."

Her glasses managed to take up half of her face, the rest of it lay in small features except for a rather pouty mouth with naked, chapped lips. With no real money to feed her own self properly, she of course didn't have any to spare on aesthetics. Sitting up straight with a head of messy dark brown hair that had so much volume it hardly had length, she realized waking at her leisure was uncommon.

"Oh god, what time is it?" she jumped to her feet. "I didn't set my alarm - I'm probably late! Or worse, I missed the class entirely!"

Relieved to find herself already dressed, Patrice scrambled around her apartment, scooping up books, stray music sheets, and notepads that should have been in a messenger bag she now could not find. "Where is it? _Where is it?_ Professor Allison is going to strangle me if I walk in too late!"

Swiftly turning on her heel, she meant to dash down the hall to her bedroom but found her face and breasts pressed nearly flat into the chest of a man wearing a fine black jacket and vest. It took a few moments for her to realize that he wasn't a wall or a misplaced piece of furniture. He did smell nice though, a bit spicy but sweet at the same time, sort of like cinnamon.

"Good morning, Miss Patrice," Sebastian peered down passed his straight nose to the young flabbergasted lady buried in his chest. "It is 7:10 a.m. and I believe your Music Theory class isn't till 8:30. That gives you enough time to eat breakfast, drink some tea, shower, and hopefully find the sense to match colors."

Patrice scrambled backwards swiftly crossing her arms protectively over the front of her droopy sweater. "Y-you! The man from last night, you're real!"

Somewhat amused by her reaction, the mysterious man who called himself a butler, smiled while brushing some jet-black hair over an ear. "You ran into me hard enough to prove that, did you?"

Patrice was pointing a shaking finger as she sifted through her blurry memories from last night. It was coming back piece by piece, not at all a dream but a legit memory. First there was that letter in a black envelope, then this guy showed up, and his name was? "Sebastian. Your name is Sebastian!"

"Very good," he congratulated her ability to remember after that loud fall last light. "Unfortunately we cannot go over yet what I came here for, at least not until after you've attended your classes for today."

"If you're real, then that means…" Patrice glanced back at the phone. "That means I really called my bank and they really said that number?"

Sebastian had walked his way into the kitchen that glimmered despite its poor wares and chipped counter tops. "Yes, you've inherited Lady Gwendolyn's family fortune. It's yours now. Do as you wish with it. But If I may make a suggestion, I would say invest in better kitchen appliances first."

While he was calm and cool watching her kettle on a gas burner like a hawk watches a mouse in a field of wheat, Patrice was viciously and repeatedly pinching herself anywhere she could get skin.

"Please don't do that Miss. Besides, one time usually does the trick," he took the kettle from the burner and brought it over a chipped coffee mug that read Daddy's Girl in bright pink Arial font.

Staggering over to the kitchen counter, desperately gathering her wits, Patrice managed to crawl herself up onto one of the three stools that bled yellow foam from their cushions. "I don't understand," she softly muttered. "This is like some sort of fairytale?"

Back turned to Patrice, Sebastian's wicked smile once again curled tightly as he refrained from shaking his head. "One could say that I suppose," he gently set the mug down in front of her. "Please, drink this and don't mind me, keep on your schedule as if I'm not here."

"Uh-huh…yeah," still in shock, she reached for the mug and somehow led the rim properly to her lips for a drink. However as quickly as she took a drink she expelled it in a spray that barely missed her visitor. "Ack! Wh-what _is_ this?"

Lips pursed, red eyes already calculating the extent of a brand new mess in the kitchen he had used the rest of last night to clean, Sebastian grabbed a paper towel and began to wipe the tea splatters without question. "Earl Gray," he informed her. "I've never had someone nearly spit up on me, let alone nearly spit up on me with the tea that I've brewed."

"Tea?" Patrice appeared a little embarrassed for her rude display. "Sorry, I'm not a fan of tea."

"That would explain the grotesque coffee rings on nearly every surface in this flat," muttered Sebastian. "Americans and their coffee."

"Even if I did like tea," her glasses clinked against the mug rim as she peeked into it curiously. "Earl clearly doesn't know what he's doing. There was some Lipton in the cabinet though. A friend of mine once stayed here and she left it."

Mentally he sighed thinking how far Lipton was from actual tea, along with how stupid and uncultured this girl was turning out to be.

"Hey, you don't have to do that," said Patrice, watching her visitor clean her kitchen floor. "I made the mess, I'll get it later."

By the time she offered, he was already done and throwing away the paper towel into the trash can. So the tea he had spent his own money on was rejected; Sebastian would start a pot of coffee instead. He worked quickly, precisely, as if he had been born in her kitchen and knew where everything was placed.

Watching him work, the young woman had forgotten about class. "A butler, that's what you are. So what's a butler doing away from his employer's house?"

The coffee pot laid sprawled open after a thorough cleaning, around it collected all that was necessary to start a fresh brew. Gourmet coffee measured precisely to the last grind, he spilled the tablespoon into a fluffy white filter and snapped the plastic top shut. Technology in this new age made something as simple as coffee, even simpler.

"Yes, I am a butler," he cleared up. "As for being away from my employer's house, Madame Gwendolyn can no longer employ me, seeing as it that she had passed away."

Not on her own accord of course, rather Madame Gwendolyn's contract was up and Sebastian had merely taken what he was promised. It just so happened that humans could not go on in the living world without a soul, let alone even in the afterlife. A soul was their entire true being and basted in Phantomhive blood made the soul all that much sweeter.

"Madame Gwendolyn?" Patrice repeated to herself pensively. "I don't remember ever being related to anyone in England. I never got a Christmas card from her, that's for sure."

There were hardly any pots or pans in this kitchen, so Sebastian had to make do. He ended up cooking a fluffy, very plain omelet that lay steaming on a plate neighbored by sausage and whole wheat toast. It seemed to come from nowhere since there was no mess or pan on the stove in breakfast's wake. Placed in front of Patrice, he held the edges of the counter as his oddly colored eyes set on her. She was such a shabby thing that he couldn't even find a single feature that might have hinted of her lineage.

"Again by the contents within my letter, I figured you were more than unaware of my former mistress. Truly you are the product of a long line of bastard children," he smiled as if he hadn't insulted her apparently dirty blood at all.

Leaning away on the stool, taken aback by his calm snarky method, Patrice found the aroma of breakfast too alluring to defend her own self. "Is this…for me?" she asked in high hopes as her belly grumbled embarrassingly loud.

Weren't most men supposed to be incompetent in the kitchen? Apparently not this man, because the omelet made within her dingy kitchen looked almost too nice and fancy to eat.

"Of course, while I'm staying here in order to clear matters up, I must pay for my room and board somehow," though the cheapest hotel might be cleaner than this place and with more interesting company.

Having turned away only a moment to look out the window over the kitchen sink, Sebastian peered back to Patrice to find that she was wiping her mouth with the back of her sleeve over a now very empty plate. Shabby, awkward, and with the manners of a peasant, she was nothing at all like the others.

About to ask if she had even tasted what had been shoveled into that trap of hers, Sebastian again bit his tongue. "Miss Patrice, it is now 7:32."

Patrice gave no immediate response, instead the young woman sat there on the kitchen counter stool biting down on her thumb nail. Unable to see her eyes behind the glare of lenses, he could not witness just how overwhelmed by the situation she was. Hardly any of it was really sinking into her brain. Right now it felt like a sponge that had been dry too long and someone had just came along to dump her in a hot bath. Rather than absorb any of the soapy water, all Patrice could do was float dumbfounded atop the surface, still shriveled by life's previous cruel hand.

Sebastian raised a dark, thin brow in minor curiosity. "Miss? Miss it now 7:35." Was this child an idiot as well?

Very slowly she scooted off the stool and her dirty converse met dull wooden floors. "I…I should be going," her light tone was soft, distant as if she were daydreaming. "I'm going to be late for class…I'm going to be late for class?"

One reality at least sank in and that was the fact she would be late for Music Theory with a half typed up paper. "UGH! I'm going to be late for class!" she shrieked in fear yet again.

Sebastian watched Patrice speed off down her apartment hallway, kicking up dust as she went. Not even a minute later she ran passed him again but with her arms full of papers and a sloppy bag regurgitating unkempt books from its flap. He didn't really know what to say or what to think about the place he found himself at, or the human he found himself with.

"If I hurry, I can catch the 7:45 bus and be on campus at 8. That gives me a half an hour to finish up the rest of my paper," she practically ripped the front door open and off its hinges entirely.

Stepping out of the kitchen, he held his hand out after her. "Wait, Miss Patrice you haven't—"

"Thank you for breakfast, Sebastian! I'll be back at 2:30! Feel free to evanesce back into whatever part of my subconscious you came from!"

The front door slammed and she was gone, leaving the butler dressed in modern black tilting back and forth in his own disbelief. "She left me here; she left a strange man alone in her apartment? Not to mention she didn't even bother to take a shower, how grotesque."

Scratching the back of his long elegant neck, Sebastian sauntered over to the stool Patrice had been sitting on, and helped himself to a much needed sit. This flat was filthy, the girl was a mess and Gwendolyn was a poor excuse for a meal. He shouldn't have made a contract on something as shallow as allowing her to live until her beauty was no more. This current girl may taste better if only because she was young and no matter how distant or diluted, still a descendent of the Phantomhive family. Sebastian just found it much more convenient to haunt a family tree. Unfortunately this child brought him over the pond.

Again the butler's narrow, deep red eyes surveyed the flat. There was just so much to do. Hopefully she would just leave this place, purchase something nicer, preferably full furnished and on a more redeemable side of the city. "I may have found a little piece of hell on earth," he sighed while pushing off the stool to stand at his full height.

Sebastian had not changed much since he first served in the actual Phantomhive manor that was long gone, not even a trace of rubble or piece of foundation. A little over one-hundred and twenty years have passed and the only thing he managed to change about himself was his clothes, very moderately of course. Beneath the black raincoat he discarded into the closet last night, was a more modern take on a butler's uniform. Everything was tailored more closely, the buttons smoothed not engraved, and very plain in the tie and shirt area. Even Sebastian's hair was the same with its disheveled fringe, threatening to cover his eyes more often than just frame them. Age was simply numbers to him, numbers that had no effect on his face or physical being in the slightest way. The only thing that managed to change was the world around him, everything was so drastically different.

About to go to work to squeeze the last bit of polish and window cleaner from their bottles laying in wait beneath the leaky kitchen sink, he heard a very familiar, very heartwarming sound. There sitting amidst the dank hallway, was a very round, lumpy, fat tuxedo-cat whose emerald eyes were barely opening from an obviously long sleep. It lazily meowed, pawing at its head with very little interest in the stranger standing its owner's house. The sight of this feline brought about some hope that this wouldn't be too horrible of a stay. That was of course, if Patrice Wells promised him a tasty reason to stay.

The cat eyed Sebastian and Sebastian eyed it. Walking towards it with inaudible steps, he crouched beside the cat and reached out a long fingered hand. White glove inhibiting his touch of the cat's soft fur, he brought the hand to his mouth and pinched the middle finger's tip of the glove between straight, dangerous pearlescent teeth. Giving it a little pull, the glove gracefully slid from Sebastian's left hand, exposing not only how white his skin was, but exposing darkened fingernails and the very top of his hand unmarked as of yet.

"What might your name be?" he said, rubbing around the cat's ear. "How does one like you, live within this tragedy and come out still so beautiful?"

"_Mrow!"_

* * *

><p><strong>an:** Okay, I've spent so long on a Naruto fanfic that anything else is totally foreign to me. I've recently started reading Black Butler & have fallen in love! But I'm not sure if this fic is what readers would want to spend their time on. So, tell me what you think? Should I continue this or go back to my Naruto world? Haha.

Also, did I make Sebastian a little too snarky? That's my main concern here, I like to keep the character as in character as possible. Thank you everyone for getting this far & I'd also like to thank my regular readers for coming here, along with**Grace** who cleaned up my summary. Much love!


	2. city of fog

**October 21, 2011**

**7:46 a.m.**

"No – wait! Please come back!" she cried to a McDonald's advertisement slapped across the backside of her fuel efficient Friday morning bus. For the very first time this semester, it submerged itself into the morning rush without Patrice taking up the first front seat.

Left in the middle of a quickly clearing crosswalk, one arm stretched out in desperate longing while the other tightly cradled her hefty weathered school bag, the rumbling baritone of a bobtail truck sent her scrambling to the sidewalk where a poorly placed open guitar case, caught her converse and sent her rolling. In one fell-swoop she managed to rip her last pair of good jeans and spill every subject from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. across a sidewalk in the middle of a loafer stampede. Rather than groan about her luck, since complaining only ever seemed to make it worse, Patrice cautiously picked her belongings from the fray of remorseless feet, stuffed her bag till it messily gaped once more, and made her dash for the college.

Right around the first mile she was reminded how much track hurt in High School and how a doctor's note was not going to get her out of this one. Sports along with any strenuous activity were the enemy for those built on gangly limbs, stacked top-heavy and closely acquainted with an inhaler. Plus her glasses had a nasty habit of sliding down her occasionally greasy nose. If not that, they would fog worse than the windshield of a car with a broken dashboard vent.

"All…most…there!" she wheezed, seeing the pigeon covered University rooftops ahead.

By the time Patrice made it through the black-barred entrance gate, up a tall staircase to the music department, into the proper room, and lastly into her wobbly seat, there was no time to finish her essay. Defeat was painful and would only now worsen in the form of her professor, who walked in on the dot and slung his leather bound briefcase atop his desk in a very annoyed fashion. Why in the world did a man who clearly despises mornings, become a professor at all?

"Good morning class," grumbled Professor Allison, eyeing every disinterested face and idiot who agreed with that false statement. "Hopefully every one of you remembered to finish the paper I assigned last week, because I know I will remember to grade them over the weekend."

Every ounce of color in Patrice's cold nose and flushed cheeks instantly drained, leaving her to miserably slip deeper behind her one-man desk. As Professor Allison reminded everyone that each essay cost more than a single test, so skipping out on one was like driving a spike through your GPA, Patrice switched her laptop on and floated her cursor over the word document icon entitled "Music Theory". It seemed to mock her misfortune in the same fashion as that McDonald's advertisement, smiling back at her as the bus drove off.

Maybe if she typed really quick, really quiet, by the end of class she would at least have a third of it done? A crappy seventy-percent was better than willingly accepting a zero after all…right?

"Please hand your papers forward. I will collect them now so none of you slackers can pull a fast one," Professor Allison's glare seemed to specifically weed out Patrice, despite the fact that before this morning, she gave him no reason to include her in the "slacker" category. After all, she was here on an academic scholarship and couldn't afford lazy grades anymore than she could afford D and G.

"Screw my life," whimpered Patrice, putting her forehead harder to the desk than she had originally intended on. "_Ow_."

On the verge of throwing up, in a desperate act of hope, she clicked the essay's icon and silently prayed beneath her breath that she had typed up more than she remembered.

The laptop took its sweet time, allowing its owners nails to dig ever deeper into the edges of her desk. When Word finally popped up on the screen, Patrice saw her header, title, intro, thesis, and everything else down to the conclusion.

She blinked in wild confusion – the paper was complete! "B-but when did I...? How did I…?"

Quickly skimming the first couple of lines in every paragraph, she found the paper to be written beautifully – maybe a little too elegantly worded than her usual work, but she was in no position to play it safe. Without any hesitance, Patrice's left hand shot up in the air as her right set the essay in correct format; double-space, Times New Roman font, and size twelve.

"Yes, Patrice?" drawled Allison, well on his way to collecting every complete paper.

"Professor, my flashdrive broke this morning so I wasn't able to transfer the word document to print in the library. Could I-" her courage wavered for only a moment. "Could I just e-mail it to you?"

Holding the papers between his thumb and index, clearly upset by the thin stack, he gestured with them towards Patrice in his famed face of disgusted disapproval. "If you were to refer to the class syllabus, you would know that I do not accept papers via e-mail."

"I-I know, I've read the syllabus top to bottom numerous times," she softly confessed, face heating up as her fellow classmates began to turn one by one in their chairs to stare. "But you see its complete right here on my laptop, and I can't exactly afford a new flashdrive right this instant. Please?"

Professor Allison sighed heavily, referring back and forth to Patrice and the thin stack of papers in his hand. "Fine, just send it right now and replace that flashdrive. Got it?"

"Yes, got it!" she chirped.

"Good. Also," his thick brows lowered in warning, "take your seat. I'm about to start class."

Only after another moment of awkwardly standing up in the middle of class, Patrice threw herself back down into her seat red-faced and e-mailed the promised essay to Professor Allison's class inbox.

Music Theory let out at 10:00 a.m. so she had an hour and thirty minutes of a lesson to endure.

About twenty-minutes into class, Patrice could no longer keep her eyes focused on the blackboard. Professor Allison had an obnoxious way of abbreviating every other word to supposedly make the task of note taking quicker. If anything it made note taking all the more difficult. But it wasn't just Allison's method that coerced her focus elsewhere; the mystery of her completed paper and the occurrences of last night had Patrice's brain reeling.

The majority of her sanity reasoned that last night had to be a dream and this morning some sort of hallucination due to the lead-based paint of her apartment. But how could she explain the exquisitely completed essay?

"Sleep…typing?" she muttered to herself. If that were so, her subconscious self was leagues more articulate than her conscious self.

Once again lost in thought, Patrice's eyes hidden behind their thick lenses and fluffy uncombed bangs, wandered their idle gaze far from the blackboard to settle out the window. Mornings in San Francisco were always dreary. The ocean never failed to bring in its thick blanket of fog overnight. From the salty docks it crept across streets, into alley ways, and through any gate it could. At this hour the University still lay in the fog's belly, its consistency varying throughout the campus. From her window seat Patrice could only make out the ends of the music department's rooftop. But as a lone breeze swept passed, thinning the fog just enough where she could see the green grasses of the quad below, she spotted a tall, thin silhouette standing just outside the gazebo.

Prescription a bit dated and fog still relevant, she strained her eyes to focus on the mysterious man. Through murk she managed to make out that he stood alone with his hands at his sides and head tilted back as if he were looking up towards the music department - to and through her very window - directly at Patrice.

"_So Mister Wong, where does this Metalcore belong in my classroom…horrible noise…a great example of music this era…"_

Allison's conversation with another student faded far into the background, until it was totally drowned out by the sudden sound of large flapping bird wings. Pigeons could never manage such a frightening racket and it only grew louder, but no one else in the classroom seemed to hear it or smell the faint scent of burning in the air. With no desire whatsoever to draw any attention her way, Patrice stayed silent and threw her worried gaze back out the window. There was neither bird nor fire, just the shadowy man, faceless and yet staring straight-up at her.

The unseen bird drew ever closer until its erratic flutter was as if it circled her head, bent on making an eerie music with the pounding of her own heartbeat. Somehow she knew that the shadow below was the cause of this, beckoning her so that now no matter how hard she willed it, Patrice could not turn away.

Silently biting down on her bottom lip, she protectively put her hands over hear ears and cowered in her seat. "Leave me alone…leave me alone," her teeth chattered.

But the shadow would not yield. It forced Patrice to look at it, as if it reveled in her fear of not only its evil, but of the world around happening to notice that she was going mad in her seat.

Just when Patrice thought she could not take a moment more, two horizontal, bright red slits formed on the shadow's face, flaring open to reveal narrow, serpent-like eyes of the deepest hell. Their powerful gaze sent her tumbling out of her seat, where she clattered onto the classroom floor and grasped for her exhaustedly quivering heart.

"Miss Wells!" fiercely snarled Professor Allison from behind his desk. "What on earth are you on this morning?"

"N-nothing!" The classroom came rushing back all at once; the smell of chalk, the soft chatter, and heckling faces.

"Get off my floor and out of my class if you're so keen on disrupting my lecture!"

Too scared to be embarrassed, Patrice packed her things and followed Professor Allison's pointing finger right out of the classroom, but not before glimpsing back out the window down to the quad, where absolutely no one stood in the dense fog.

Patrice left the music department in a hurry to scurry into a bathroom downstairs. Inside the bathroom she gathered her senses in a stall, and only when her heart stopped trying to beat its way out of her chest, did she come out and douse her face in cold water from one of the sinks. A few other girls from her class inevitably wandered in after being excused. But upon sight of Patrice, looked down at their phones and walked right back out the door.

"She's such a freak," muttered one to the other, before the door swung shut behind them.

The word _freak_ was not exactly a term that broke her heart anymore. Besides for being quiet and not all too concerned about her physical appearance, Patrice hardly earned the sole right to the word, but its avid use refused to die. But for the first time since middle school when she denied an 8th graders clumsy advances and he angrily lashed that title onto her, did she really wonder if it might be true or not. Considering what just happened in the music department, _freak _was hardly the word for it. Something like _crazy _or _lunatic_ fit a lot closer. Then again she always heard that crazy people had no idea that they were crazy.

Patrice's reflection stared back, searching her face for a telltale sign that she was in fact losing her mind. In the end, the sound of the bathroom door opening had her quickly fasten her glasses back over her face and push away from the sink that had supported her wobbly knees up until now.

"Patty?" softly cooed an unsure voice. "Hey, what happened back in class? Are you okay?"

Miyuki did not have 8:30 music theory; it was her older brother that did. He must have texted her after Patrice was told to leave class.

"Yeah…I'm alright," she lied, once again in the refuge of a locked stall, listening to Miyuki's approaching footsteps.

Just outside the bathroom stall now, Miyuki peeked in through where the door did not meet with the walls. "Satoshi said you leapt out of your chair screaming, like you fell asleep in class and had some sort of nightmare. Is that what happened?"

Atop the down seat, knees to her chest and bag trapped between both, she wondered just how much her friend liked her. "I…I saw something outside the window," she hesitantly began. "A man was standing in the quad, looking up at me."

"Like a stalker?" awed Miyuki, excited by a possible live drama about to unfold before her very eyes. "Was he cute?"

"If he was cute, do you think I would have jumped out of my seat screaming, Miyuki?" snapped Patrice.

"Well, no. I guess not," she sadly replied, reaching into her Keroppi tote bag. "You know if some guy is creeping you out. You could always report him to security. They'll keep an eye out and if they spot him, they'll escort him off campus."

There was a large portion of the story that Patrice purposely left out. Miyuki may have been into the supernatural when it came to television and books, but not even she would believe that some shadow with malicious, glowing red eyes was just standing around in the quad outside the music department, staring up at her. Plus hearing and smelling things that weren't there just opened up one too many doors of possibility. None of which Patrice was willing to venture through and get an anxiety attack over each one.

Hearing Miyuki still rummaging around in her bag, Patrice peered up just in time to see a flashdrive slip between the stall door and its wall. "Here, Satoshi told me to give you this. He said to tell you not to worry, that he has about three of them lying around in his room. So you can have this one," she wagged the little device. "Come on. Take it. You know you want to."

Even though she had lied about her flashdrive breaking, it was in fact barely working. "No, I couldn't. I'll buy my own," she turned away from the temptation. "Tell him thanks anyway."

With a shrug as she slipped the flashdrive back into her bag, Miyuki suddenly began to giggle. "How about you tell him yourself? He's always offering you things. I think Satoshi likes you," she stuck her tongue out playfully.

"No, he doesn't," Patrice firmly corrected, finally opening the stall door to walk out. "He just feels sorry for me. That's all."

Unable to argue with that, Miyuki reached for her friend's hair and attempted to groom her as she often tried. "Do you even own a brush?" she laughed.

"I do, it just doesn't seem to help one bit."

Miyuki was a very pretty girl and her brother was equally good looking. However it wasn't their looks that drew her to them, it was just their overall kindness and their own goofy qualities. Even at the ripe old age of twenty, Miyuki still loved to wear her keroppi bedtime cap in public, and her brother would whip out his 3DDS whenever a professor assumed too highly of him. Mr. and Mrs. Ishikawa were equally nice; immigrants from a little village in northern Japan that Patrice could not pronounce without hurling Miyuki into laughter.

She really liked Miyuki and her family, and thus was incredibly jealous but never acted on it. They were just too good of people to mistreat in any way.

After about ten-minutes of enduring a few more friendly pokes and prods, Patrice smiled and then gently shooed Miyuki's helpful hands. "It's fine, really. I um…I need to go though."

"Oh. Okay then. Well I guess I'll tell Satoshi thanks but no thanks once again from Peppermint Patty! We'll see you after your next class, right?" she looked hopeful as always.

"Yeah, I'll meet you guys up at the café," kindly reassured Patrice.

Liar.

* * *

><p><strong>October 21, 2011<strong>

**11:46 a.m.**

Countless times she had reassured Miyuki that she would meet her and her brother at the school cafeteria, and not once has she ever done so. The reason behind that was simply money. The school cafeteria was really expensive and it would be embarrassing to sit in front of her friends without the means to afford a thing. Of course they would both offer to pay for her food, like they would offer to pay for a movie ticket or BART pass when they wanted to bring her along somewhere. However Patrice could not bring herself to accept their kindness. It would be rude to accept and even more so to get in a habit of expecting handouts. It wasn't that she was incredibly noble or had some sort of ego to protect. Patrice just did not want to be a burden on anyone. Ever.

After leaving her second class, still shaken up by the occurrences of the first, the path back to her favorite loitering area went through the quad she saw her phantom at, so she opted for the detour through the construction area of a new lab unit. Following the winding sidewalk into the swirling fog, shadows of other students sprinting across the well manicured lawns in the distance reassured Patrice that she was not alone. Not that it ever personally helped to have an audience when you were prone to doing things those on the more normal side, found questionable.

Inevitably the fog grew thicker, so much so that it choked out the sight of everyone and everything else but the oncoming sidewalk.

"Sheesh, it's really ridiculous today," she grumbled to no one particular. "Knowing my luck, I'll end up wandering clear off the Golden Gate."

Outside the buildings and long hallways, the autumn weather was bitterly cold. In her only sweater, the very same gray pullover from last night, Patrice wrapped her arms around her upper body and her bag in hopes of keeping warm. It did not help. The warmth of her body escaped out with her materializing breath that joined the slow moving fog as it eerily seemed to clear a path towards a gazebo. The exact gazebo that sat in the quad she had tried so hard to avoid.

"How did…" she came to a slow stop and peered around in confusion. "How the heck did I get turned around?"

Off in the distance she could hear the loud crack of hammers on wood from the construction unit she had meant to pass by.

Ahead of her stood the gazebo; vacant as it always was during the colder months. It had been erected her freshmen year, now as a junior, it had endured many taggings and sloppy re-paint jobs. Originally it had been a cream white, now it was an off-beat eggshell.

Approaching the gazebo, still protectively clutching her bag of books that she knew could be used to bludgeon any possible attacker, be they natural or supernatural; she peered inside to find unsurprisingly no one, just benches built into the gazebo walls, silently flaking paint.

Gulping as she slowly began to step out, something suddenly leapt from beneath one of the benches and took flight, soaring noisily passed her ear.

Letting out a loud shriek, Patrice dropped her bag, threw her hands over her head and made to sprint for her life out of the gazebo and out into the open cold. Before she could even make it out onto the dewy grass, she smacked into a familiar, immovable chest clothed in an equally familiar, finely tailored coat of black. Bouncing back from the collision, she frantically gathered her senses to gawk up at Sebastian Michaelis standing in the gazebo entryway, calmly peering down at her with his oddly colored eyes, as if he had been standing there and watching the entire time, unbothered by the cold bay weather or the eerie world of impenetrable fog that swirled behind him.

"Pigeons," he softly said, referring to what had flown out of the gazebo and frightened her so. "They're simply rats with wings, nothing to be afraid of."

Unlike most who have encountered Sebastian, she did not take immediate notice of his dark ambiance and wonderfully charming mask. Instead a natural sense of panic overcame Patrice, when she realized that the music department was empty at this time of day, most students were in class about now, and the fog that refused to lift, veiled them and this gazebo with only one exit and that was through Sebastian.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, glimpsing down at her only weapon, unloaded all across the cement. "You followed me here—that's stalking!"

Also noticing secondhand textbook spillage all across his feet, Sebastian gracefully knelt down on one knee to orderly gather them. "Technically I did not follow you here. That would be impossible, as I had quite a lot of work on my hands back in your apartment once you left. Again, technically speaking…" he came to a pause mid-sentence to glimpse through his heavy lashes up to her face; no eyes, just annoyingly thick lenses. "I followed your scent here once I completed that impossible purge of filth."

Finished with her bag, he regained proper posture and held it out towards her along with what looked like to be a package bound in a royal blue, silky scarf knotted at the top. "Here you are," he kindly gestured for Patrice to take both. "Since it is now the afternoon and most people enjoy a lunch, I took the liberty of packing yours."

The bit about her scent did not strike as odd, just that he enjoyed an elaborate method of speaking.

Patrice never once packed a lunch in college, mainly because her food was needed at home, where the endless hours of studying took place. "Um, that's…nice. But really unnecessary," she swiftly retrieved her book bag, leaving Sebastian holding out the cloth-wrapped package.

Over his many years, he has known many Americans. Never before had he met one who acted with caution when presented with kindness, let alone food. Generally speaking, he had the impression that they were of a brasher nature. But every species and nationality had their exceptions. Or maybe this was all just because Patrice was not only a young potential master, but female.

"Hence why I previously said 'I took the liberty of'," he set the package down on one of the flaking benches.

An awkward quiet befell the scene, in which rather than force his food on Patrice, he instead untied the top-knot of the package. The cloth fell open like blue petals, making a modest blanket for the lacquered box to rest upon. A strong, delicious aroma of steam rose from the continence inside and wafted in her direction. Instantly her nose gave an excited twitch as she leaned in close, rather than away towards the exit she had been so thoroughly eyeing like a nervous mouse does to its hole in the wall.

"Grilled sauté hen on toasted rye, topped with tomato, red-leaf, cucumber, and a spot of gray mustard—every bit organic, since the people in this area seem to be quite keen on that," not that he cared if humans desired to drink down pesticides with their hormones, that was their business. In his case he just did not want the taste of his handcrafted meals to suffer.

Patrice hardly heard half of what Sebastian explained to be in front of her. All she knew was that it had been an incredibly long time since anyone ever packed her a lunch, and never had it possessed any aroma beyond the smell every kindergarten school lunch box got when one too many baloney sandwiches were packed and forgotten.

"Um, you really didn't have to do this," she said, trying to muster up the same strength she used to refuse Miyuki's brother's kindness. "I mean I'm not…I'm not all that hungr—" A vicious growl came between them, that from her stomach.

Sebastian knowingly smiled, "Please, I insist."

Surrendering to the divine smell of lunch and her insistent hunger, Patrice sat down a safe distance from Sebastian as he brought a steel-plated thermos from seemingly thin air.

"There is also this: since you clearly did not agree with the Earl Gray, today's brew is Darjeeling. The tea itself originates from a region of the name's sake, in West Bengal, India. It's prized over most black teas and I'm sure even your feeble pallet could appreciate its musky, spici—" his eloquent narrative was abruptly severed.

Not even two seconds after Patrice brought the thermos lid to her lips for a drink, the tea dribbled back out, down her chin, and onto the cement floor of the gazebo. Her face had taken on a pale green as she set the thermos lid down and slowly pushed it as far away from her as she possibly could.

"Musty should never, _ever _be used to describe anything you put into your mouth," she shuddered. "That's as awful as Earl's!"

Sebastian stood there, not quite sure what he had just witnessed. Never before had anyone rejected anything he's ever cooked, baked, or brewed—especially not some degenerate who thought Lipton to be a tea and Earl to be a person.

"_This matted, uncultured mutt," _he grudgingly thought with a kind smile on the exterior.

Wiping her chin and mouth with her sleeve, Patrice watched Sebastian seal the thermos back up. He stood out like a silver knife in a drawer of plastic sporks; tall, sharp, eloquent, as if the word gentlemen solely existed now within him.

"Thanks," she said, taking her last bite, figuring she'd buy a soda later from one of the many vending machines that littered the campus. Surely if this otherworldly butler appeared to her for a third time, her new fortune was just as real as he. "So why are you here? I doubt you followed me to school, just to bring me lunch. I figured if you were real, you'd be on a plane back to wherever the heck in England you're from."

Noticing she was about to wipe her mouth with her sleeve again, Sebastian withheld a noticeable cringe and offered her his handkerchief instead. "You and I have some business to discuss," he replied.

Once Patrice was done eating, not a crust of bread left, he packed everything back up and set it aside. For the first time in a long time, Sebastian not only sat, but broke his posture by leaning forward to rest his elbows on his lap. The tall, dark man now stared out to the fog, clasping his white-gloved hands as they rested between his parted knees. Without a leash, no longer anchored by human flesh, he felt light again, as if a single gust of wind might take him up into the clouds.

"Oh yeah, business," said Patrice, interrupting Sebastian somber train of thought. "You mentioned that in your letter…something about a contract?"

"Yes," nodding his head, he turned to put the young woman in his sights. "Have you finally accepted the reality of your situation, or do you still believe me and everything else to be a dream?" His smile became a serious line, waiting for her answer to dictate its next move.

Patrice, who had been twiddling her thumbs nervously beneath the table, suddenly closed her eyes to give herself one last pinch. When she opened them back up, there Sebastian still sat across from her in the lonely little gazebo outside the University's music department.

"It's too much," she softly confessed to her feet. "The letter, the money, accepting it from someone I didn't even know…it's too much for one person."

"Madame Gwendolyn is dead with her inheritance nowhere else to go, unless you desire to leave a noble family's long legacy to the state?" clearly by his tone, that was not acceptable.

Any young woman would be over the moon to find that she was the heiress to a British noble family's legacy. They would be in ecstatic tears and yet this one, this odd one was not. Patrice apparently could not bring herself to accept her good fortune, anymore than she could take her eyes away from the only exit.

"Too much for one person, you say?" his eyes like freshly cut ruby, zeroed in on this sublime opportunity. "If you believe it to be too much for one person, I would be happy to offer you my services."

All this time having successfully avoided eye contact with him, Patrice brought her gaze away from the gazebo entrance to see that the Phantomhive butler had silently came close to lay a long, open hand of offering across the table that separated them.

"No, I couldn't," she shook her head and scooted further around the table, farther from him.

Hand slowly withdrawing, Sebastian brought his broad shoulders back and nodded with a subtle smile. "I see. Well, I've served the Phantomhive household and their descendents for many generations. Thus I'm well acquainted with the responsibilities of the name. I could be very useful to you, Miss Wells."

About to reach for her bag to leave this odd man alone, she paused. "You meant to say that your family has served them over generations? I mean…you couldn't be older than twenty-five."

For a moment Sebastian did not speak, he allowed the silence to stew between them, sort of enjoying the confusion and fear surfacing on Patrice's young face. "No," he once again brought a sinuous hand over his breast. "I in fact meant what I said because I never lie. For nearly three centuries now, I've served the Phantomhives."

Patrice Wells stared to Sebastian Michaelis as his apparent insanity sank through her clothes, puckering her flesh with chills from head to toe. "That's impossible," she harshly whispered.

"For a human, yes, it is quite impossible. But you see…" Sebastian slowly moistened his lips. "I am simply one hell of a butler."

Mid October in the city of fog, the cold was ruthless. Never before had she felt this sort of cold come over though, so icy that it sank passed her clothes, through her naked skin, into her bones, making the very marrow ache. Something was not right about him. Aside from how gentlemanly he presented himself, along with the weird things he's said, Sebastian made the wind go still and the fog squirm. To her horror, the unseen bird and its wings started their ruckus around her head again. Heart leaping into her throat, Patrice jumped to her feet.

"It was you! You were the one looking up at me!"

The butler without a master heckled into his fist. "Please forgive my rudeness from earlier. I had no intention of disrupting your studies. I hope the fall was not too painful. Did I hurt you, Miss Wells?"

Eyes wide, face pale as a ghost, the young student grabbed her bag and began to backtrack, feeling her way towards the exit. "You're insane," she trembled. "St-stay from me…"

Narrowing his ruby-red sights, he reached out and grabbed her saggy left sleeve; the ugly gray sweater was as coarse as it looked. "Pardon for handling you so freely, but I'm afraid I only grow hungrier and we have not even finished discussing our business," he softly hissed, that Cheshire grin infallible as long as potential prey's fear was afoot.

A loud slap echoed throughout the foggy world then, as loud as a leather belt across the broad side of a wet boulder. "Don't you dare touch me!" she growled, fingertips aflame.

Sebastian was struck by the fierceness behind the blow, not the pain it was meant to inflict and miserably failed at. "My, my…you're not the silly, ugly starling I thought you to be. Rather, you're a cowardly pigeon," he watched her step out onto the grass.

"And you're a beady-eyed crow!" she accused, lashing out a finger. "Stay away from me, or I _swear_ I'll call the cops next time!"

For the second time today, Sebastian watched Patrice Wells run off in the opposite direction, this time she did not disappear down the hall of her sad apartment complex, but off into the fog that swallowed her whole. Perhaps another would have found this frustrating, a human who just wouldn't take the bait. However he found it all rather interesting despite his increasingly ravenous hunger. When prey became willing, all the fun went right out the window.

"So Patrice Wells, we have started our game and you flee without Knight or King. A queen's privilege is to move however, wherever she desires…and you choose to hide beneath your covers. Humph," standing up, Sebastian brushed his rebellious black fringe over an ear. "I wage she tastes like bitter cherries."

She ran. She ran as fast as she could, until her lungs cried mercy and her inhaler was as breathless as she. The fog only seemed to go on and on, until it came to abrupt stop just before a street of slick black that lagged out from afternoon chaos. A bus emerged around the corner, honking as she perched too close to the curb.

"Stop!" she shouted, waving her arms wildly.

The bus stopped, opening its doors for her to quickly leap aboard. After paying in little change, she scurried to the first seat behind the driver and hugged her bag. What had just happened finally anchored itself in her reality; Sebastian Michaelis was a monster as real as that A+ paper, as real as the orderliness of her bag, and the fullness in her belly. She could not wake from this nightmare anymore than she could wash out the taste from her mouth.

In the seat Patrice shivered from the cold his gaze harbored in her soul. The entire time she was on the bus to her apartment, she avoided the eyes of strangers who passed her on the aisle. They wondered what made the young, regular student passenger so pale, so nervous. When she got off at her usual spot, somehow Patrice managed to stop shaking long enough to put her key in the door and turn it. Once inside the apartment complex, she ascent the rickety stairs and rushed to her room, not only avoiding the eyes of her landlady, but her holler about late rent.

Door unlocked, she slipped into her room and slammed the door shut, locking each and every inch of it, from chain to the latch.

The silence of her lonely existence was calming. Patrice stood there in the dark, holding onto the door knob tightly. She was unsure if walls would keep Sebastian Michaelis away. But she would soon find that he was the least of her worries. As Patrice turned to look towards her single window across from the door, too see afternoon's light poorly filter through her dark , stained curtain, a knife glimmered in the posession of an intruder. She hardly had time to scream before something hard and heavy, bludgeoned her from behind and everything truly went black.

* * *

><p><strong>an:** So there was chapter 2. I um…am starting to get a little nervous about this fic. It has been a really long time since I've written for another OC. Plus I'm finding my research to no longer be about weapons & Japanese culture. I'm now researching food & tea! Wth? Lol But I gotta admit that writing for Sebastian is very fun.

I've gotten some great feedback so far. It's really quite the relief. So hopefully this chapter will spark the fires for reviews. I really hope so ;( I'd hate to go at this in the dark. Anyway, thanks everyone! Hope to hear from you on Sebastian & if this OC sounds promising or not.

p.s. Ciel will be appearing in the next chapter. He'll clear some stuff up Lol


	3. devil's dowry

**a/n: warning:** this story will be changing from "T" to "M" for violence, some language, & future smut. Sorry to those who may not like that. But I promise I keep everything in good taste.

* * *

><p><strong>October 11, 2011<strong>

**5:53 p.m.**

_Thump…thump…thump…_

As if it were already in his hands, Sebastian could hear the human's frantic heartbeat like that of a cornered rabbit's on the verge of its death shriek. The moment she had awoken from being bludgeoned across the back of her soft human head with one of her ugly bedside table lamps, she was subjected to further pain and perhaps soon, humiliation.

Across from the Orianthe apartment complex, he stood atop a lonely rooftop with his elegant hands resting on its ledge. From here he could see across one of the United State's brightest cities. Only once before had he seen it burn brighter; in 1906 when the entire city after an earthquake had burnt itself down to a pitiful crisp.

"Not in history has a modern imperial city been so completely destroyed. San Francisco is gone," he quoted Jack London beneath a warm cloud of breath.

Gazing to the city in this day and age, nothing beautiful had been birthed from those ashes, just pissed-stained cement.

From his rainy perch, he counted the lit windows of the Orianthe till he came to Patrice Well's gloomy window, where shadows ominously flickered to and fro. Sebastian counted three men who masked themselves as farm animals as they pillaged her sad excuse of a flat.

"They will be lucky to find anything of even meager value," he calmly said to himself.

Patrice Wells was a terribly pathetic excuse for a human being, an even more pathetic excuse for a Phantomhive descendent. A once thick stew of a bloodline had become thin as well water and perhaps just as tasteless.

So, why was he here? This he found himself wondering over Patrice's desperate attempt at a scream soon hushed by a hand.

No one was going to hear her over the blare of car alarms anyway. Even if someone did hear; a frightened scream could not be new in this wretched neighborhood.

"These voyeuristic tendencies of yours are beginning to make me wonder if you truly are going mad in your old age," uttered a soft, child-like voice from the dark fog and cold rain. "After all, your standards clearly have fallen to the bottom of the bucket."

Sebastian's heavily lashed eyes, the color of divine wine, winced with subtle annoyance. "I thought you said that you would never venture over to the United States of America; something about ungrateful, disobedient curs?"

Seated on the very ledge Sebastian leaned upon, Ciel sat down, crossed his right leg over his left, appearing no older or less dignified than the day his soul was sealed away.

"Senile also comes with old age," snidely volleyed the eternal child, turning his cerulean eyes away from Sebastian and out to San Francisco's waters in the distance. "This country is only two-hundred and thirty-five-years-old. By the layers of filth, you would think it much older."

"Already counting decades and centuries, yet you are still so very new," a cruel smirk curled Sebastian's lips. "Try not to blush when you think of how lengthy an eternity can be."

Ciel captured Sebastian in his intense eyes. "Laugh all you want. If anything, I am in a better situation than you. The world is still a mystery, while you have probably turned over every stone, swam to the depths of every ocean, and now pout in your boredom—"

From across the street through Patrice's window, he caught sight of her near naked body.

The young demon curled his lip in disgust, "Are you just going to stand there while they violate her? Because her squealing reminds one of a cornered sow."

A wind picked up, dancing the foul smell of flooded sewer beneath their noses. Sebastian made no effort to hurriedly answer Ciel. He was no longer bound by contract to do anything in the child's favor.

"Whether I stand here or not depends entirely on her," he patiently replied.

Ciel raised an incredulous brow, "And what does that mean?"

His former butler kept a focused gaze on Patrice's window, "patience is a virtue, Ciel Phantomhive."

Maybe it was the smugness in his voice; maybe it was being addressed by his full name by a former servant, or maybe it was just the vague reply entirely that pinched Ciel's last nerve for the night in this wretched city.

"Humph," the boy took an abrupt stance. "Do not pretend that virtue, or any of them for that matter, mean a damned thing to you."

Turning on his heel, Ciel elegantly hopped and soundlessly landed below on a wet, rickety fire escape. About to make a traceless leave, something kept his small feet firmly planted on the rusty steel beneath them. It was a something that perked his veins, made the echoes of emptiness roar in the depths of a tiny, yet ferocious belly.

"Now you feel it," knowingly said the seasoned demon, down to the child whose eyes ignited a hellish red. "It is almost impossible to ignore the sound, the smell, and the taste of a human soul when they begin to question the faith of their god."

"Th-that's what this is?" shuddered Ciel in repulsion.

"Why, yes. Surely you must still remember the moment when you were human; desperate and weak, that you renounced your faith in the god that shared no miracle. Then you reached out for a thread and savior."

Ciel fought back the raging desire to leap from the fire escape and claw through Patrice Well's window and into her living room, where her soul was ripe for the picking. Teeth grit behind tightly sealed lips, he strictly turned away from the dinner bell.

At the sight of his former master's agony, Sebastian took great joy and advantage. "I'm afraid that tonight you will again go hungry. No longer is it my duty to attend to that empty belly and I cannot offer you even a scrap of generosity. If Patrice Well's wills it, I will be the only to dine on her."

Bringing himself up onto the ledge, he straightened out his finely tailored coat and wiped his wet hair from his handsome face. "Do yourself a favor and give into your nature. Or live forever in agony."

* * *

><p>Pain was such an intense sensation, yet she never had it ring throughout her entire head like the toll of a bell. Her skull felt fragile, the young mind inside caught in a daze as her legs gave way and her knees slammed into the freshly polished wood floors of Orianthe apartment's four-hundred-twenty-ninth room. Patrice tumbled off to the side, the right side of her jaw taking the brunt of the fall. For what seemed like a moment all had gone dark, but when she woke, she was being dragged toward her foul smelling couch.<p>

Rough, cold hands latching to her arms, they pulled her deadweight onto the couch. Barely clinging to consciousness, Patrice peered through blurry eyes and dark, sticky eyelashes as three figures pillaged her apartment. Home invasion, burglary, and theft were not unknown evils to her. But the only thought she managed to stick with as her mind lay in disarray like so many papers flung off a desk, was that she had no wealth or honey to attract these wasps. Why me, she wondered in her throbbing agony.

They kept her apartment dark, not switching on any lights or even flashlights as they tore every drawer open, ripped cabinets from their hinges, and dug through her closets.

"There's nothing here," one grumbled, flinging her mattress over its dirty box spring, "Nothing but text books and bread crumbs!"

Down the hall from Patrice's gloomy bedroom, a tall shelf was torn down and gutted ninety-nine cent romance novel by ninety-nine cent romance novel. "This girl has shit," agreed a second voice. "Why did we come here again?"

"Because the back door was open like he said it'd be," roughly answered the third and last intruder, who stood beside the arm rest of the couch where Patrice's head laid closest to. "Gather the text books, we could sell them online."

Having not sensed him, the sound and nearness of the third intruder's voice startled Patrice back into full-consciousness, yet she didn't make a single move. Instead she lay there, desperately hoping they would just leave.

The third intruder scratched beneath his vinyl pig mask that he had dug out from a convenience store's holiday clearance bin last October. "She's a student at SFSU, so she has to at least have a damn laptop or ipod lying around here," he snarled, rounding the couch to stand beside Patrice's limp body.

"I've checked everywhere, there's no—"

"Check again!" irritably squealed the pig. "Look for a backpack she might have flung around somewhere in this rat's nest."

This apartment was a rat's nest and Patrice knew she was a pathetic excuse for a young human being. Even so, she had no desire to die tonight. They could have her laptop. They could have whatever material possession they could find of hers, as long as they just took it all and left her alone.

Lying there as still as the dead, she could hear her heartbeat and feel it pounding against the inside of her ribcage. She tried to take as shallow breaths as she could to not bring a single ounce of attention towards herself, yet the pain at the back of her head made Patrice want to sob so badly.

"I found something!" harshly came a whisper. "I think this is her backpack. It's pretty damn heavy…"

"Open it," urged his companion, who left Patrice's overturned room.

Their approving whispers said that they had found her laptop. A rustling followed next and she guessed that they heeded the pig-faced intruder's directions to gather her expensive secondhand textbooks.

Just leave. Please just leave, she prayed in thought.

The sounds of their heavy footsteps gathered at the door. It was quiet and she held her eyes closed as naturally as she could. They were going to leave. There was nothing else here that they could want.

A silence lingered in the apartment's musty air. Patrice no longer heard others and so as carefully as possible, she opened her left eye just a sliver.

"Good, you're awake," breathed the swine, inches from her face.

Patrice's eyes flared open in terror and a gasp as she bolted up. With all her instinct and might she kangaroo-kicked the intruder in the chest. Stumbling back briefly, he quickly caught his footing and viciously jabbed a finger in Patrice's direction as she clamored to her feet.

"Hel-!" mouth opening to yell, a hairy-knuckled hand roughly smothered her half-spoken plea.

A wobbly-chinned horse mask leant over Patrice's shoulder and its wearer barred his arm across her chest. As she struggled to break free and call for help, she sank her teeth desperately into the man's thick fingers.

"She fuckin' bit me!" he yelled,

Patrice tasted blood and it made her gag in his arms. In place of a bloodied fingered hand, a thick piece of duct tape was slapped across her mouth and her arms yanked behind her back. Flung stomach first onto the couch, the man in the horse mask was joined by another in a sheep mask, and together they held her down and duct taped her hands behind her back.

Rolled onto her back when they were done, the horse-masked man wound up his bloodied hand in a tight fist and punched Patrice across the head twice. Again the bells were ringing and she swallowed down a sudden vomit. There was a warm sensation now creeping downward from her forehead and nostrils.

"Damn, stop it Shane," warned the sheep-masked man. "You'll kill her that way."

"That bitch practically took a chunk out of me!" angrily replied his partner.

Their argument hardly made any sense to Patrice. Nothing made sense right now. Her head spun and yet she knew she was lying still, unable to scream and unable to move with duct tape binding her escape. Slowly her glasses slipped from her face, oiled with sweat and blood. Her body broke out in tremors of fear as the pig-faced man dug his knee into the couch and peered down to her with empty amber eyes.

"Behind those glasses and all that matted hair, you're almost attractive," he drawled, pushing Patrice's untamed bangs back from her face. "Almost."

Don't touch me, she thought in disgust. Eyes wide with fear, she shook her head to get his dry hands off of her. The gesture only made him laugh. The other men were waiting for something, perhaps a direction to take with this. That direction came with the pig-faced man grabbing at her hips and roughly pulling her lower half towards him.

Patrice began to kick and thrash, unaware of how hard she was sobbing behind the tape.

"Hold her still," he harshly whispered to the other two.

One held her down by the shoulders, as the man with the bloodied hand reached gingerly back into his pocket and dislodged a switch blade that sprung to Patrice's attention not even an inch from her nose.

"Stop making a fuss," he warned, tone inflected still by the bitterness from her having bit his hand. "If you're a good and quiet little girl, we'll finish up quickly and leave you be."

Roughly thumbing tears from her cheeks, he gave the one in charge a bit more room.

Pants unbuttoned and unzipped, she whimpered feeling herself separated from her clothes. The apartment felt colder than it ever had. Jeans tossed to the floor, lumpy gray sweater pushed up over her breasts in their plain flesh toned bra; she closed her eyes and tried to pray. Unable to speak, her voice echoed in her head so loudly. Please don't, she thought. Please, God, make them leave me alone. Why is it always me? Why me? Why?

"It doesn't have to be you," cooed a tempting and familiar voice within her mind, though not her own. "How presumptuous of you to believe that your god is listening, when there are billions of others begging for his graces that go unanswered."

The voice was right. Why would God help her now? He had never done so before, no matter how loudly she begged through prayer.

Eyes still tightly closed, not wanting to see the animal-faced men, she could feel their hands on her naked skin, trying to rip the last of her clothes off. She clenched her legs and tightened her body, unwilling to give up just yet.

Someone help me, her thoughts pleaded. Maybe her neighbors from downstairs heard the ruckus? Maybe the foul little land lady and her ugly son would come to her door with a complaint of too much noise—at this point, she didn't care who she would be indebted to. The tears made her flushed cheeks sticky and mucus silently began to choke her.

"Patrice, I did say that it does not always have to be you," continued the smooth, deep voice. "I could help you I could set you free from your ill-fate, in exchange for only your soul. But if you choose not to call on me, I have no choice but to let them violate and kill you. We both know that men like these will not let you go free. They never let any of the others live."

The eye in her mind suddenly opened to a world, a world of infinite black and twisted trees erect from gray soil dappled by shards of bone. "Where am I?" she felt her lips move, no tape to silence her in limbo.

"A wish, a sacrifice, and a contract that would bind you and I," his voice penetrated the black and off in the immeasurable distance, the silhouette of a tall ferocious winged beast.

Patrice felt coldness in her bones, yet was not nearly as frightened in this world as she was in the other. "I don't understand. Who are you?" she stepped forward not from bravery, only deep wonder.

"I could be whoever you want me to be," it answered.

"It's you again," whispered Patrice. "The butler, Sebastian Michaelis…what do you want from me?"

The shadow emanated an elegant, almost alluring laughter. "Your time is running out. Tell me what you desire and I will make it so, after a sacrifice of blood. Then we will have time for as many questions as you like."

Cold hands, rough hands—she could feel them. They crawled up her skin and greedily groped at her flesh, trying to pry her legs apart.

"I want them to stop. My desire is for them to stop—"

"And I will stop them," the voice hushed its impatience for her to find direction. "What do you want, Patrice? Why is it not fair for you to die tonight—what have you yet to achieve that you so desperately want to before you shuffle of this mortal coil?"

There were so many things that she wanted, only now did they seem insignificant compared to the gift of life. "I-I want…I want to…" her meek voice trailed off in helpless sobs.

The deep black began to churn, as if they lay beneath the surface of a full cauldron over rising flame. "What is your wish?"

"I want to live, butler!" shouted Patrice. "I want to live a life better than the one I've led. I want to be somebody and I want the chance to love and be loved by others!"

There was a silence on the other end; could he make a contract out of that? Her wish was to live in the light, contrary to many of those before her.

"Consider the wish accepted. Now, do you forsake God? Think carefully about this," he cautioned, about to recite a line he's said for thousands of years in so many tongues. "If you once reject your faith, the gates of paradise will forever be closed to you."

She stood open-mouthed at the horrors of hell.

At the edge of the proverbial seat, he watched Patrice wince and squirm in disgust of the hands and hot grunts she could feel against her flesh. "I'll ask but once more: do you wish to make a contract?"

"Y…yes. Yes, I do! Just hurry, please! Make them stop!" she shouted.

All at once her reality came rushing back just in time to see the hands of her animal-faced attackers, recede as their expressions twisted in puzzlement of falling black feathers and shadows that crept forth from their respected corners.

Without glasses, their features were blurred to her and she strained to see what they were gawking at. All shadow massed at the front door, looming over them menacingly as the feathers dropped. There were screams, loud, wretched, and wet. Blood sprayed in all direction, sopping up the smelly couch, the stained rugs, and cat-scratched curtains. It splattered across her face, down her front. The feel of blood and it's warm, sticky consistency was not new and yet she shuddered.

Three tattered bodies he piled neatly in the middle of the living room. Without human form, he was again a frightening mass without title. "A name," he breathed calmly. "I need a name. As I said before, I can be whoever you like me to be."

Disorientated by the blurred sight of death, realizing her binds had somehow been cut, Patrice slowly got to her feet and backed away toward the window where she blindly felt for the curtains. Bringing them over her near nakedness, she squinted trying to make sense of this force of primal evil. "Wh-whoever I like?" she quietly repeated.

"Yes," he affirmed with a toothy grin.

Fingers curling tight into the curtains, she pressed them hard against her bare skin. "Sebastian Michaelis suited you just fine. I don't…I don't care to name you any other."

Sebastian nodded his head in a silence as his body shrank back into the shell she preferred. "Your bloodline continues to lack imagination. That is just fine then. I suppose I have grown very accustomed to this name and this body."

He peered down to the piled corpses, oozing blood from every tear he inflicted on them without a single mercy. Such a mess he has made. But when Sebastian turned back to Patrice, she was no longer in sight, though a window beat against its frame in the wind and rain.

Rusty metal screeched and rattled as she climbed down the fire escape, clinging to the bloody curtain that she ripped from its rings to wrap around her body. The ladder slimy from rain, her grip soon slipped, sending her clattering to the alley way below.

No pain was greater than the one in her head, so she ignored her ripped knees to jump to her feet. Patrice ran down the alley, pushing passed a nest of homeless men who shook their wet styrofoam cups at her as she tore passed.

When she came from the alley, she started down the sidewalks, San Francisco's steep hills burning her legs as she went. Attracted by a flickering light in another alley, she collapsed behind three trashcans overflowing with garbage. There on her side, her blurry eyes watched blood wash from her skin, dilute, and pool around her body.

The world no longer made sense. In just two days, she had gone from understanding her place in the world, to thinking that she had gone completely insane. Had there really been men in her apartment? Had they really tried to hurt her? Had she in fact made a deal with a well-dressed and well-mannered devil?

"There is one last thing," whispered Sebastian, kneeling down in the rain beside her.

Patrice turned her cheek from the cement and looked to his blurred face, surprised he had found her at all.

"Where shall I put the mark of our contract?" he simply asked, tucking a bit of raven hair behind his ear.

Though her mouth opened, there were no words. Her human soul had been through enough for the time being, and so she just lay there in the rain behind garbage, mute and no better than a stray cat.

Sebastian elegantly inclined his head, "forgive me then if you find my choice unfavorable in the future, but since you are unable to speak at the moment…"

Taking an ungloved hand, his index finger pointed and touched the middle of her sternum and slowly slipped it down the center of her chest and stopped just above where her breasts met. "Here will do just fine," he said with a polite smile.

"A-ah…" Patrice whimpered, feeling a sharp fingernail dig into her skin and precisely carve.

When he was done, Sebastian regained his tall stance and brought his bloody fingertip to his parted lips. Her blood dripped warm onto his tongue as he admired his handy work. Satisfied for now, he unsheathed an umbrella from his black coat, opened it, and held it over Patrice to stop the rain from beating down on her pathetic head.

"I believe," he spoke in eloquent confidence. "That a visit to a hospital is in order."

* * *

><p><strong>an:** Aha ha..._yeeeah_, I know it's definitely been a while. If you're a reader of my Naruto fic, you'll know I'm the worst updater there is. Not that it's intentional, I'm just in college & more often than not, school work sucks me bone dry. Plus I was really wondering if I had what it took to write a good Kuroshitsuji fic. So I'm really, _really_ sorry about how long it's taken to update. I will make no promises of when I can update, I'll just say that I'll get to it when I can.

Thank you everyone whose read & reviewed. Seriously, I'm so glad that these chapters have been well-received. I hope to hear more from you, because your thoughts & opinions help out most definitely. Again, thank you! Hopefully this chapter is to your liking & hopefully Ciel was not ooc.

-Constance

p.s. Tell me what you think via review. Positive or negative reviews are much more helpful than silence~


End file.
